Healthy competition is moving into three popular shopping centers. By summer’s end, LYFE Kitchens are slated to open in Dallas’ Preston Center, Uptown’s West Village and at Park Boulevard and Preston Road in Plano, says executive Mike Donahue.

[UPDATE at 10:30 a.m. May 28: Plano opens June 13, Preston Center opens June 27 and West Village opens July 25, according to a spokesman.]

LYFE (that’s Love Your Food Everyday) Kitchen serves dishes that are 600 calories or less, 1000 milligrams of sodium or less, and contain little to no white sugar or trans fatty acids. Customers order at the counter, then grab a seat.

Two of its executives are former McDonald’s management. Current LYFE president and CEO, Mike Roberts, was president and CEO for McDonald’s globally. Donahue was chief brand and communications officer for McDonald’s USA.

LYFE Kitchen interior, as shown here in Chicago

LYFE Kitchen is “a combination of everything we learned over 20 years in food service for the industry’s largest brand,” Donahue says. ” … [LYFE Kitchen is] just a different menu.”

That menu is marked with gluten-free, vegan and vegetarian dishes as well as calorie counts and sodium. Example menu items that could appear at the Dallas-area restaurants include barbecue chicken flatbread (470 calories), quinoa crunch wrap with avocado, edamame, hummus and black rice (539 calories) or roasted salmon with tomato, fennel, broccolini, garlic and tomato coulis (517 calories).

The menus at the Dallas-area LYFEs will be largely the same as in other states, but possibly with “a little more heat,” Donahue says.

The company is eyeing other Dallas-area addresses besides the three opening soon, and it is also considering locations in Austin and Houston, Donahue told me.

Chef Art Smith, who was once Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef, joins vegan and vegetarian chef Tal Ronnen, author of The Conscious Cook, to curate the corporate menu. Donahue says the company aspires to open 250 LYFE Kitchens in five years. For now, the California-born business, launched in 2011, has four storefronts open.

“The model is great-tasting, convenient, affordable food that happens to be very good for you,” Donahue says. “We believe that it answers the biggest unmet consumer need in America.”

LYFE Kitchen’s coming-soon locations: 1900 Preston Road in Plano; 8315 Westchester Drive in Preston Center in Dallas; and 3699 McKinney Ave. in West Village in Dallas.

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